Ethical, Distinctive, Results Based Marketing For America's Top Doctors

Aesthetic Marketing 101 – How to Write a Great Medical Ad for Your Practice

Of all the medical specialties, aesthetic practices have both the easiest and hardest job when it comes to medical marketing for doctors. The results of your procedures are the most visible, but many of your services are considered elective. Patients have to choose to undergo anesthesia. For them the benefits of undergoing a facelift, or rhinoplasty, or even a cool-sculpting procedure which is far from painless has to outweigh the pain and risks. And that’s the challenge set for you when writing medical ads for your practice. You need to showcase your expertise to your patients, separate yourself from the pack of other cosmetic doctors in your area and demonstrate in 5 seconds or less why you are the premier physician in your city. That’s why it’s so important to know how to write a great ad that will have a significant, positive impact on your physician marketing campaigns.

Focus on Benefits Over Features

First, as you sit down to write your advertisement, you may be tempted to write all about the features of your services, procedures, equipment, and expertise, but stop right there. Instead, I want you to focus on the benefits that your patients receive from coming to you for these procedures. How are their lives improved? How do they feel about themselves after they leave your office? Is recovery speedy with minimal discomfort? Are they going to get years of happiness and healthier living from choosing this procedure?

Focus on these aspects of any service or procedure that you intend to advertise, and you’ll get a much better response than if you focus on the efficiency of a particular laser or any feature of the equipment you use. Remember, your patients come to you because they want to look and feel better than they have in years, so show them how you’ll make them feel when they choose your practice.

Don’t Just Tell Them – Show Them What You Do

Next, remember that – with the noted exception of Google AdWords – you’re never going to write an advertisement without an image. Images and videos gain you a significant amount of engagement on social media, your blog, and on your website. For aesthetic marketing, in particular, before-and-after images are incredibly effective. These show your potential patients that your current patients didn’t have perfect features, complexions, or bodies before they came to you for help.

I’d steer clear of showing picture of the actual procedures in progress, as these can make your audience focus too much on pain and/or discomfort. Instead, show them the results they can expect when they come to you.

Remember to Optimize

Back to actually writing your ad, whether you’re writing a Google AdWords ad or one that will appear on your website and social media pages, you must remember SEO. Use the right keywords, and you’ll improve your ad’s search engine results rankings, and more people will see it. That said, if you just stuff your ad full of keywords, Google will bump you to the bottom of the list, if it doesn’t remove your ad from search results entirely.

According to Roy Williams in an article for Entrepreneur, you should always write advertisements as if you’re making a sales presentation. Make sure that, in the space of the advertisement, your audience knows what you’re offering to do for them, how you’ll do it, and why you’re better than the competition. You may have to write a few longer drafts and pare it down to a shorter, more succinct version, but this will help you get all of the necessary information in place. When I’m writing an ad campaign for a client the first thing I always focus on is audience. Where is the ad going to be placed? Who is it going to be viewed by. Secondly I focus on message. What unique message could we use about this doctor’s practice that none of his competition are using? This requires some creative thinking and it’s where studying successful businesses outside the medical field is so important. The more unique you can make your marketing message, the more your ad will stand out. The more “similar sounding” your marketing message is – the more likely it is that it will blend in with the rest of the marketing noise in the marketplace and be ignored.

Follow these tips, and you’ll be able to write much better advertisements for your practice and use them on social media, Google AdWords, your website, and your blog. Doctors all over the country are taking advantage of modern physician marketing techniques like these to attract more patients for their practices.